Chris McQuin has been a member of the Robotic Vehicles and Manipulators group in the Mobility and Robotic Systems Section since 2010. He joined JPL in the spring of 2008 where he worked in the Planning and Execution Systems Section. Prior to this Chris was a Lieutenant in the USAF.
Chris has worked on a number of robotic projects around the lab. He is currently the project manager and rover engineering team lead for the All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (ATHLETE) rover. Other mobility and manipulation development projects include mobility and sampling on primitive bodies, robotic manipulators for potential Martian sample return missions, field test ready mobile rover electronics, and collaboration on the next generation Multi Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV) chassis.
Chris spent eight months at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) between October 2009 and May 2010 where he was involved in the detailed design of the vehicle suspension and overall system concept design of the Centaur 2 rover. While at JSC Chris was also a part of the Robonaut 2-to-ISS mission where he worked directly on the robotic humanoid’s series elastic upper arms.
Chris’ space flight operational experience includes leading the Multi-Mission Mars Relay Operations team meetings which coordinated and deconflicted all communication relay support around Mars, simultaneously supporting the Phoenix Lander, Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and both Mars Exploration Rovers (MER). Chris was also a Mobility and Instrument Deployment Device (Mob-IDD) analyst in 2008-2009 for both MER rovers and a Surface System Test Bed test shift lead during the Spirit Extraction testing in 2009.